


Not Only The Strong Survive

by Tarlan



Category: Survivor (1999)
Genre: Angst, Apocalypse, F/M, Post-Movie(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-03-19
Updated: 2006-03-19
Packaged: 2017-10-20 18:06:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/215639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tarlan/pseuds/Tarlan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Doc wonders if they stopped the alien before it could contact its own kind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Only The Strong Survive

It would have been so easy for Transicon to pass off the incident at Morpheus I as isolation fever. They had no reason to believe that an alien had survived deep inside the Earth for a billion years only to awaken and mutilate the crew of Morpheus...except Cat's video tape and a sample of the amazing blue gel scraped up off the drill room platform gave credence to the joint fantasy. The alien almanac provided the final proof, the item disappearing into the bowels of Area 51 where its secrets would be revealed, eventually.

Adam and Cat had called the alien a farmer, and Doc had to agree. The images on the almanac provided a chilling account of humanity's place in this universe, led around like cattle raised for the slaughter. Certainly, his autopsies had revealed a logical progression and surgical precision to the mutilation as the 'farmer' tested his herd for viability and taste.

Doc had always been drawn to the Pan-Spermia theory for how life had evolved on Earth but seeing it proved brought no sense of triumph. Instead, his thoughts turned constantly to the skies, wondering if the alien farmer had managed to ring the dinner bell before Adam chopped down its communications mask. He wondered if any of its kind was still out there, harvesting Neolithic versions of humans for food. As a scientist, he could not ignore that possibility, nor could he ignore the fact that a visit from them was long overdue. The aliens had anticipated many millennia of waiting for their crop to grow but they would investigate the lack of communication eventually. If just a single blip of the alien's transmission got through then others could be on their way to Earth even now.

Doc swallowed hard as he explained his concerns to the mix of government and military personnel. More than one nation was represented in the auditorium but that only served to make Doc more worried. His fear of crying out warnings to an indifferent or skeptical world was not realized. The powerful nations were taking this threat as deadly serious, and that merely added to the nightmare. Almost he wished they had not believed him as then maybe he could have pretended that there was no threat darkening the night sky.

All four survivors from Morpheus I were taken to Area 51 though they released Adam soon after.

Doc endured the medical tests stoically as they examined his eyes for the surgery that had corrected his vision. At first they believed the blue gel might have made the corrections but it proved to be suitable only for repairing cellular damage from injury or infection rather than working upon genetic disorders. Even after a month it seemed strange not to have to don a pair of glasses when he awoke each morning. All he could tell them, though, was that he had felt an intense pain in his eyes during that final confrontation that had lasted but a moment before Adam caught the creature's attention.

His sole consolation was his belief that it had not intended to kill him outright. Why fix his eyes otherwise? It had taken a step towards him and he wondered if it had sensed his hunger from surviving almost two days without food and had planned to feed him the way it had Cat. His imagination ran wild from that point onwards, with nightmare images of how a livestock farmer monitored its herds, culling the weak and tending to the healthier animals... and breeding his stock.

Finding Stark alive and uninjured placed that seed in his mind. Two healthy males and two healthy females were left alive, though Doc was painfully aware that it required but a single male to mate with the females, and Adam was the more dominant. Adam was the equivalent of the alpha male, the herd leader, so maybe his own survival was simply to be a meal on legs for when the farmer eventually needed to eat.

After almost a full month of body scans and an uncountable number of blood tests, his worst fears were realized when they identified a marker in his genetic code that had no earthly connection. Both Cat and Stark carried a similar marker and taking the analogy of a farmer to heart, he knew it signified the equivalent of an identification tag clipped to a cow's ear or a bird's wing. He had been branded as livestock.

If--or when--the aliens returned, they could probably locate him anywhere on the planet within minutes. He said as much to the multi-disciplined scientists studying him at Area 51.

"You gotta quit worrying," Dr. Harris stated in a slightly exasperated tone. "We're looking at ways to shield you...chemical and physical."

Doc nodded tightly, though he felt no lessening of his fear. He understood that their concern was not so much for him as for the general need to find a way to hide humans from the aliens so as to prevent them being harvested. In particular, they wanted to protect important government officials, military commanders, and valuable scientists. He knew it would be hard for Earth to raise a good defense against the potential invaders without those human resources to co-ordinate attacks across the world and to create biological and physical weapons.

Doc just hoped they did not kill him in their attempt to find countermeasures.

****

With so much secrecy surrounding different projects within Area 51, he should not have overheard the tense report from one military officer to the head of extraterrestrial research. Doc swallowed hard. He thought his only worry was the possibility of an armada of starving aliens heading their way, believing the one on Earth had been destroyed. The report from Morpheus said differently.

Following the incident, multi-national military had established a base at Morpheus to monitor the situation. Recent seismic activity far below the surface proved that something was alive down there and slowly working its way back up. They estimated that it would reach the surface in a matter of days, a week on the outside. If it was the alien then Doc hoped the military would be able to contain it--or preferably to kill it before it attempted to send another message into space.

What Doc did not expect was to come face-to-face with the creature less than two weeks later. Admittedly, this time it was the one being herded and experimented upon but it turned as soon as Doc stepped up behind the one-way mirror in the soundproofed booth next to its holding cell. Two large steps brought it to the mirror directly in front of Doc, its inhuman eyes looking straight at him as if it could see him.

Until this moment he had no idea what it looked like beneath the environment suit it had worn in Morpheus. Now he recognized the spindly gray creature with large black, almost insectoid eyes from bad science fiction shows and strange-but-purportedly-true encounters with aliens. Now he knew they had never needed to fear this creature contacting its kind to bring them to the planet to harvest the humans for they were already here, and they had been visiting Earth for decades. Without its protective covering, it looked fragile, almost delicate but Doc had witnessed the aggressiveness of this creature.

Doc shuddered in fear when it raised a gray hand to trace his features upon the mirrored glass separating them; it could see him. It continued to stare at him, eyes turning as Doc stepped sideways, following him with its inhuman stare. Doc flinched as something touched his arm.

"It has a mouth and vocal chords but has made no attempt to communicate-"

"We don't hold conversations with our food. Why should it?"

Three weeks later it was gone and no one would say what had happened to it.

Yet when he slept that night, his dreams were filled with strange images of gray aliens, and of Cat and Stark lying naked beneath him as he was forced to have sex with them. When he awoke he felt no tiredness connected with a bad night's sleep, with his body thrumming with health and vitality and with the loose-limbed pleasure that always buzzed through him after sex.

The scientists came for him again and though they said nothing, the looks on their faces told him the truth: his nightmares were real. The aliens had taken decades to come to a decision regarding the humans on this world but now the harvesting had begun.

As humanity lost the battle, many were led quietly to the slaughter while others raged and fought to the bitter end but the final result was the same. Within one week, the world changed quickly as industry faltered and cities fell. Pockets of humans fled to the deep forests and caves, sent back to the Stone Age to survive on roots, berries and what little meat they could hunt and kill.

After the first harvest, all that remained of humanity was suitable breeding stock, mostly females kept alive to produce food for future harvests. Doc knew he would be one of the survivors too but not as a free man and not for his intellect. Instead he was corralled along with dozens of other males like prize bulls purely for breeding purposes.

Hidden within their protective environment suits, the grays looked intimidating, striking fear into those herded with him but Doc knew a secret and he smiled slyly. This world was their greatest mistake, and he wondered how long it would take before they realized that their food had become disagreeable to them in more than one way. By now they would have started to consume those they had harvested, and the deadly poison--safe for humans and lethal to the grays, created in Area 51 and introduced into the reservoirs around the world weeks earlier--would have started to work into them via the food chain.

A few months later, he did not rejoice aloud when the first of their so-called masters fell dead beside the farm wall where he and the other livestock were penned, killed by an accumulation of the poison in its body. He did not draw any attention to himself at all until the day when not one of the farmers came to feed them, and then he used the intellect that the grays had ignored to find a way to escape the pen.

Seemingly a lifetime ago, he had spoken timidly in the dark while a monster slayed their colleagues. In response, Stark had told him he was a strong man and would prove himself one day. As he led the small herd of humans to freedom, he knew that day had come.

THE END


End file.
